New Kid On The Block
by PokeSpeBanette
Summary: Axl joins the Maverick Hunters. Rated M for language.


Renny: This entire one-shot is basically just Axl watching X and Zero be their usual freaky selves and wonder why the fuck he even bothered to join the Maverick Hunters.

X: Let's not forget him wanting to be a part of this freakiness!

Renny: That too, yeah.

Zero: This should be entertaining . . .

Axl: Yeah no kidding.

Renny: One of you three do the disclaimer- and sheesh, I think this might be the most characters I've ever had in this AN room . . .

X: I'll do it! Renny doesn't own _Mega Man X_.

Renny: On with the show!

 **OOOOOO**

"For the time being, you'll just be a rookie- doesn't matter if you've already done a bunch of higher-rank missions, those don't really count because you technically weren't a Hunter then." Alia explained.

"Aw . . . But what rank would I be if I wasn't forced to be a rookie?" Axl wondered.

Alia thought about that for a moment, tapping her navigator console ponderously. "I'd guess . . . either an A-class or an S-class."

"Cool!"

"But for now, you've gotta work for either of those classes." Alia reminded him, immediately dampening his mood. "You passed the entrance exam with flying colours, so you're a high B-class Hunter, and with your skills and enthusiasm you'll be seeing the ranks pretty damn soon I imagine."

"Sweet. That means I can get a better room, right?"

"That's just one of many, many perks, but yeah you get a better room." Alia agreed. "And because all rookie Hunters require a mentor or two to show them the ropes for the first month or so, you'll be getting one of those, too."

"But-" Axl tried to protest.

"-you don't need one? We know, but we figured it was either this or have the city council at our throats . . . again . . . so we went with the safer option. I'm sure you'll know your mentor pretty well."

The doors opened, and in walked the guy that had dragged Axl (almost literally) to Hunter HQ in the first place.

"Zero's gonna be my mentor!?" Axl exclaimed, excited.

"Unfortunately." Zero said, scowling slightly. He turned to Alia. "I can get along with this kid easy enough, but you know damn well mentoring isn't my thing- that's X's whole shtick. Why me and not him?"

"Because X is still sulking." Alia deadpanned.

" . . . Point taken."

"Why is X sulking?" Axl asked, looking at both of them, confused.

"We hired you without his permission." Zero informed him.

"Uh . . . can you do that?"

"X is _a_ commander, not _the_ commander- yeah, we can do that." Alia explained.

Axl didn't bother asking what the difference between being _a_ commander and _the_ commander was. The answer would probably just confuse him even more.

But whatever, he got to work with Zero some more! He would've liked to work with X too, but he couldn't have everything, could he? Nah, that'd just be way too easy and boring! Axl wanted to make this work, and if he got everything handed to him easily, that'd be . . . well, stupid, really.

. . . He'd only been an official Hunter for an hour and he was already being patriotic. Good god.

"So, what do we start off with?" Axl asked Zero.

" . . . Uhhh . . ."

"It might take a while for him to process this, he hasn't had to mentor anyone for a few years." Alia whispered to Axl.

"How long is a few years?" the newest Hunter whispered.

"Twenty years, give or take."

"Jesus _fuck_ , that long!?" Axl cried, stunned.

A few of the other navigators around the room glanced up disapprovingly, and he stared at them blankly.

"Shouldn't you be used to bad language by now?" he wondered.

"I got it!" Zero suddenly yelled, startling everyone. They all stared at him, and he pulled out his Z-Sabre. "Sabre practise."

"I don't use a Sabre." Axl reminded him, holding up his twin pistols.

" . . . But I'm shit at shooting." Zero replied, somewhat disgruntled as he stuck his Sabre back wherever he'd gotten it from. Probably his massive hair. He looked at Alia. "Are you _sure_ you can't give him to X?"

"X doesn't use pistols either."

"No, but he shoots stuff. That's closer to pistols than an energy Sabre." Zero said.

"Yeah, but you know how X feels about guns that aren't attached to arms."

"How does X feel about guns that aren't attached to arms?" Axl asked. He already had a small idea, based on the amount of times X had glared at his pistols whenever Axl brought them out in the blue android's presence.

"You know that feeling you get whenever you do something really, really awesome and you do it totally perfectly?" Zero asked him.

Oh, maybe he had it entirely wrong.

"X is the opposite of that." Zero went on.

Or he had it completely right.

"Don't look so startled, you know he tries to steal your pistols and melt them sometimes." Alia casually told him, like it was the most normal thing on the planet.

" _What_?" Axl cried, immediately holding his pistols to his chest protectively. "No way he's gonna get my babies!"

"Dude, that was weird. Even for you." Zero informed him.

"It's not like he's succeeded." Alia soothed, like a mother telling her child that the monster under their bed was just a figment of their imagination when it _clearly fucking wasn't_.

"He could've done! Why didn't anyone tell me?" Axl whimpered. For some reason he felt vaguely violated.

"I honestly thought you knew." Alia said. "Evidently, you did not."

Axl looked at Zero, who shrugged.

"It was funny." the S-class Hunter explained.

"Cut your hair off!" Axl snapped.

Zero, shocked, grabbed his ridiculously long ponytail protectively. "How dare you!" he cried. "Take it back, now."

"The hell I will!"

"Oh my god, I work with fucking children . . ." Alia sighed long-sufferingly, pinching the bridge of her nose.

"Literally." Zero agreed, looking at Axl.

"I was made to be a kid, what the hell's your excuse?" Axl demanded.

"I'm just-"

" _ZEEEROOO!_ "

The doors slammed open and X marched in, glared around the room, and then finally his eyes found Zero, who was attempting to unsuccessfully hide behind Axl. Unsuccessfully because he was like a whole fucking head taller.

Though Axl didn't complain because he was too busy staring at X in shock.

More specifically, X's armour- which was, for some strange reason, an obnoxious shade of vomit yellow.

"What in the name of my goddamn creator have you done to my armour!?" X demanded, storming up to Zero.

Axl, because he valued his life and actually wasn't an idiot (shocker, we know), got the hell out of X's way and left Zero to fend for himself.

"Smart." Alia whispered to him. Axl grinned at her.

"I didn't do anything to your armour." Zero told X, rather calmly for someone who currently had one of the most powerful Busters on the planet pointed at his face. "Now, your _walls_ , however . . ."

"THAT WAS _YOU_!?" X shrieked.

"I had no idea he could scream that loud." Axl muttered to Alia.

"He can do louder, trust me." Alia replied.

Axl's dirty mind instantly went to the usual place dirty minds went to upon hearing that, but Alia gave him a flat look and shook her head.

He almost asked what she meant if she didn't mean _that_ , when X grabbed Zero's collar and forced the much taller android down to his own eye-level.

"Fix. This. Now." X hissed.

"Hey, I only did the walls, I had nothing to do with your armour!" Zero protested.

"Then find whoever the hell did this to my armour and make _them_ fix it while you fix my fucking walls!"

And he swore, too. Wow, Axl was learning a whole _bunch_ of new things today.

"How am I _supposed_ to find them, huh?" Zero challenged. "If they're so skilled that they can change the colour of your armour without you noticing, tell me how I'm meant to find this guy!"

X's eyes narrowed and he let Zero go, stepping back.

Then he pulled a giant pair of scissors out of nowhere.

" _NOT THE HAIR_!" Zero screeched, immediately running away.

X growled and gave chase. "Get back here, you overgrown toilet scrubber!"

" . . . You were totally right, you do work with children." Axl commented, glancing at the senior navigator.

"That I do." Alia sighed, watching the chaos uncaringly. "I'm just glad Signas isn't like these two idiots."

"HEY AXL!"

Axl looked over to where Zero was still trying to avoid the very-pissed-off X. He was mostly successful, but X was pretty damn fast.

"Yeah?" he called.

"TOMORROW MORNING, SEVEN AM SHARP- TRAINING ROOM! DON'T BE LATE OR ELSE!" Zero shouted. He dashed out of the room at high speed with X still on his heels, and then the doors slammed behind them both.

" . . . Y'know," Axl said after a few moments. "Those doors are automatic."

"Yeah, X defies physics sometimes." Alia shrugged. "You get used to it- especially when he's pissed off. Or hyper."

"Hyper?"

"You do not wanna see that guy hyper, trust me." Alia shuddered like she was remembering a horrific experience. "God, I still get flashbacks whenever I see kitty litter . . ."

"Kitty what now?"

 **oooo**

X didn't murder Zero (or his hair), so lucky for Axl he still had his mentor the next day.

"I see you're still in one piece." Axl observed, walking into the training room. It was pretty spacious- way, way bigger than the one at Red Alert, and it had actual training equipment instead of the second-rate bullshit he had to make do with before.

This place was fucking awesome.

"Yup. Managed to track down the idiot that made X look like a reploid Pac-Man, too." Zero nodded, looking pretty damn proud of himself.

"Who was it?"

"Douglas." Zero said.

"Yeah I have no idea who that is."

"He's the guy that'll make you big and flashy weapons."

"I wanna meet him right now."

Zero just laughed. "Yeah, eventually. I'm gonna take you around on a tour tomorrow, you can meet him then- first, though, I gotta see how you fight."

Axl stared at him. "But . . . you know how I fight."

"Yeah, but that was back before you became a Hunter- now that you are one, you're gonna need a whole new thing. You can't just recklessly attack everything in sight."

"But that's what you do."

"But I'm a wildcard."

"But you're also X's partner."

"But that doesn't really matter."

"But-"

"Start another sentence with 'but' and I'm sticking this up yours." Zero snapped, whipping out his Z-Sabre.

"Sorry."

"As I was saying . . ." Zero glared at him suspiciously for a moment, and then carried on. "You need to figure out a new way to fight. Not entirely new, you'll be happy to hear- just a bit of tweaking so you don't accidently kill any idiot humans or reploids that happen to be nearby."

"Is 'shoot the fuckers' not a good technique?" Axl asked.

"It's a damn good technique, but if I don't train you to not kill every Maverick we come across, X'll have my ass."

"Pretty sure he's already got it." Axl muttered.

"What?"

"Nothing."

Zero looked at him for a couple of moments, but then obviously decided he wasn't going to bother pressing. He moved over to a weird and fancy-looking machine and pressed a button, and then all of a sudden the entire room was lit up with holographic targets- some of them were red and white, like normal, but others were green and white, and there were some that were blue and white.

"Red and white targets represent Mavericks." Zero explained, fiddling with the controls as Axl gaped at the holograms. "Green and white targets represent humans or reploids that might be in the line of fire. Blue and white targets represent Mavericks as well."

Okay, that was confusing.

"What's the difference between the red and blue ones?" Axl asked him, still distracted.

"Hey, you're the first one to actually ask first!" Zero exclaimed, sounding way too happy about that. "Normally the rookies just shoot and then wonder why their score's so damn low . . . The blue ones represent Mavericks we might be able to talk down from whatever they're doing, whether or not it's a hostage situation or maybe they're just having a bad day."

"Wait. You want me to _talk_ to a target?" Axl frowned, looking back at him. That made no sense whatsoever.

"No, I want you to avoid the green and blue ones, shoot the red ones, and only shoot the blue ones if they start flashing red. That means they're going critical, which basically represents-"

"-a Maverick going crazy and trying to kill everything around them?" Axl finished.

Zero looked impressed that he'd guessed it. "Yep. So far, only S-class Hunters and a few really skilled A-class Hunters have managed to get full marks on this. Even I don't get it every time, and X doesn't either- so don't feel bad if you fuck up and hit a green target or a blue one. This is just training. If it was real life, then you'd have something to worry about, but that's why we've got this system in place."

Then he flipped a switch and suddenly all the targets started moving randomly and at various different speeds.

"And of course, they won't be floating in the air doing nothing." Zero said, stepping back and crossing his arms. "You have ten minutes to shoot as many reds or blues-going-reds as you can. Begin."

Axl started shooting.

In the end, he ended up shooting every single red one- and a few dozen flashing blues- that he saw, which was pretty much all of them.

Unfortunately, he also accidently shot a few none-flashing blue ones, mostly because some of the red ones moved so fast that they tricked him into thinking that a blue one had just started flashing. He also accidently shot one or two green targets.

"Hey, most rookies do way worse than that!" Zero exclaimed, checking Axl's score. "Pretty damn high. Come over here, see what you got!"

Axl's score was seven hundred and fifteen.

"That's . . . high, right?" he asked, looking up at Zero.

"For a rookie, hell yeah it is. Then again you've already got experience, so you've got an edge." Zero shrugged. "You got a few points taken off for shooting the green ones, but don't worry about that, you'll get better. The red ones, you hit all of them- that's why your score's so high, basically. You did hit a few dozen blue ones by mistake, which also took off your points, but that's the same as the green ones."

"And the blue-flashing-reds?"

"You hit almost all of them, but you got them once they turned red anyway, so it doesn't matter. Nice job, kid, you're gonna make an A-class in a month if you're this good at field missions!"

Axl grinned at that. "And since I've already got the experience . . ."

"Oi, don't get cocky- you gotta work for the rank." Zero warned, looking and sounding oddly serious. "We're not just gonna bump you right into the higher classes because of past experience."

"But didn't X get bumped up to an S-class back when he was a B-class?" Axl asked. "I heard about it from a couple of the other rookies in the mess hall yesterday."

"Oh, yeah, he did . . . but that was way, way different." Zero shook his head and turned off the machine, and all the remaining targets- which had frozen when the ten minutes had passed- vanished. "He was forced into taking the commander position for a while, which automatically makes anyone- even a C or B-class Hunter- an S-class."

"How can someone be forced into taking a position?" Axl wondered as Zero went over to one of the corners of the room and started pulling out random training weapons.

"Same way you force anyone to do anything they don't wanna do." Zero shrugged, turning around and holding up one of the training pistols. "When you spar against another Hunter in the training room, you're not allowed to use live ammo- so you need to use the training weapons."

Zero threw the training pistol to Axl, who caught it and instantly decided he liked his own pistols better.

This thing was obviously a piece of crap.

"Yeah, I hate training weapons too." Zero said, as if he could read Axl's thoughts. "And since it's technically your first day of real Hunter training . . ." He picked up a weird-looking, small piece of metal and attached it to his arm, then grabbed another one and attached that to his other arm. "I'll use my Buster."

"You have a Buster?" Axl asked, surprised. He'd never seen Zero use it.

In answer to his question, Zero's arm turned into a Buster- it didn't look very impressive, not on him anyway, but it was definitely a Buster.

"Yeah, ever since the . . . third war, I think? I've always preferred using my Sabre." Zero said, checking his Buster and then aiming it at Axl, testing his eye-coordination. "S'why I'm shit at shooting stuff. Just pretend this is a real fight, and for the love of whoever the hell created you, don't pull out your own pistols and shoot me. I really don't want another trip to the med bay after the bullshit some of the other rookies pulled last week."

"What happened last week?"

"I won't go into detail, but it involved a backflip, gravity switching constantly, and some idiot's training Buster exploding in his face." Zero said. "Okay, begin!"

 **oooo**

It was a couple of days after his first training session that Axl began to wonder just what exactly he'd walked into.

Reploids didn't technically need to eat, but it was, for them, another source of energy if they couldn't sleep or recharge for whatever reason (glitch in their systems, nightmares, etc.). So the Maverick Hunters had a large mess hall.

Currently Axl was sitting all by himself in the furthest corner, pushing around some really questionably-edible food that . . . looked like crap, if he was honest.

But complaining wouldn't make it any better, it'd probably do the exact opposite if what he'd seen a few minutes ago was anything to go by- some random, unsuspecting Hunter had complained about the food and had nearly gotten her arm ripped off by the cooks.

Fuck, those guys were vicious.

So, instead of doing what he normally would and loudly complain to anyone who was listening, he sucked it up and ate the crappy food.

Or tried to.

"Hey Axl."

He glanced up, saw Zero standing in front of the table with X tucked under one arm, waved and then got back to his crappy food.

And then paused, thinking about what he's just seen.

Axl looked up again.

Yep. X was tucked under Zero's arm like a box.

Well then.

" . . . Hi?" Axl tried.

X didn't actually respond, not really, he just continued tapping away on his datapad and grunted quietly.

"Hey, so, we gotta miss the training session tomorrow." Zero told Axl, as if he wasn't standing there with X under one arm. "Signas wants me to babysit that marching thing that's going on tomorrow morning, and then he wants me to oversee a couple of other units for the rest of the day- which means I can't hang around with you."

"O . . . kay?" Axl replied.

"Fuck, don't sound so excited." Zero said sarcastically. "Anyway, I'm handing you over to X for tomorrow. X? Yo, X, what do you want him to do?"

"M'not training him." X muttered, still focusing on his datapad. "Too busy for that."

"Dude, c'mon, I'm just handing him over to you for like a day- just keep him with you at all times and pretend like you actually give a shit."

"Meh."

Wow, Axl felt _so_ appreciated.

He knew X didn't exactly approve of him becoming a Hunter after over half a year of begging and crashing random missions, but Jesus fuck, he could at least have the decency to pretend to care.

Zero rolled his eyes and sent Axl a 'creators help me' look.

"Just keep him out of trouble." Zero told X. All the blue android did was grunt again. Zero rolled his eyes and turned back to Axl. "And keep this moron out of trouble too. Try and get him to relax a bit, if you can- fuck knows he needs to."

"Does the relaxing come before or after the ass-kissing?" X wondered.

"Ass-" Axl broke off, snorting and trying his best (not really) to not laugh at Zero's expression.

"I'm not ass-kissing anyone, you wanker!" Zero snapped, tightening his grip on X briefly. X didn't even blink. "I hate you. I hate _you_ , too."

"I didn't do shit!" Axl cried, offended.

" _Exactly_." Zero barked. Then he spun on his heel and went out of the mess hall, grumbling under his breath while X kept doing whatever he was doing on his datapad.

It took Axl half a minute to realise he'd just had an entire conversation where one of the participants was being held like a box and _no one in the room gave a single fuck_.

What.

This place was weirder than Red Alert, and _that_ was saying something.

 **oooo**

X was boring.

There was no other way to put it- he had been kinda cool, if a bit (okay, a lot) whiny during the Red Alert incident, and he'd been pretty damn good at kicking ass. So good that Axl had actually stopped a few times just to admire his shooting and wonder how the fuck he could become that good.

But now that he was actually spending some time with him, and not just brief moments where he was begging X to let him be a Hunter and X was refusing him again, Axl found himself bored out of his mind.

At least Zero was almost as crazy as he was. And he set up training sessions which got increasingly more difficult and fun.

X? Oh, well, let's see . . .

He just sat at his desk doing paperwork. Not literal paperwork, no one used paper anymore (it was the twenty-third century, for fuck's sake), but he had four datapads and a holo-screen around him and was somehow managing to work all five of them without breaking a sweat.

It had been entertaining and cool at first, but after the first half an hour, Axl had gotten bored.

And X was pretty much pretending he didn't exist, so. Yeah. That didn't exactly help.

Obviously he'd ignored Zero's advice to pretend to give a shit.

"X . . ." Axl called, drawing out the android's name in the only way he thought a single letter could be drawn out. "Hey X . . . X? C'mon, buddy, don't ignore me. X. X . . . X. X. Come on. Helloo-oo?"

X just continued to ignore him.

An hour of loudly demanding attention later (and also finding all the different ways to pronounce a single letter, which amused him for a few minutes at least) Axl began to wonder if X had turned off his hearing for the sole purpose of ignoring him.

He could try going into Stealth Mode and screaming in X's ear, but he was pretty sure Zero had told him to never do that unless he wanted a Buster shot in the face- and Axl did not wanna mess up his face, he was quite attached to it, thank you very much.

So he decided to try a new tactic.

"Hey, X, what does bird piss look like?" Axl called.

X's hands stilled.

 _Aha, gotcha,_ Axl grinned.

It took a few more moments for X to actually respond verbally, though. " . . . What?" he said, finally looking at Axl for the first time all morning.

"I said, what does bird piss look like?" Axl repeated. "I mean, you only ever see their shits, right? S'all gooey and weird and it goes hard and you can't ever get it off unless you scrub a lot."

"Why . . . why is this relevant?" X asked him.

"Just wanna know!" Axl exclaimed. At least this proved that X hadn't turned off his hearing in favour of ignoring him, but that also made Axl marvel at how amazing X's ignorance skills were in general- he probably had a lot of practise with Zero.

" _Why_ do you wanna know?"

"I just do, 'kay? Do birds piss or what?"

"How do you know I know?" X demanded, turning his full attention to Axl and resting his cheek on one hand. "I may not have known, for all you know."

"Implying that you do know, then." Axl pointed out.

"I do, yeah, but why the hell would I tell you?"

" . . . Cus if you don't I'll never shut up."

"I've been ignoring you all morning." X reminded him.

"Yeah, but now you've paid attention to me." Axl grinned. "You can't ignore me after this. You'll be unable to ignore me. Un. A. Ble."

" . . . Birds don't piss. They can't, it's physically impossible for them- it's why their poop is always gooey. They both pee and poo at the same time." X explained, looking like he'd rather be doing anything else than explain the toilet habits of birds to Axl.

"But . . . then how do they fuck?"

X stared at him.

Axl shrugged, leaning back in the chair he'd commandeered for himself a while ago. "Think about it- if birds don't piss, like you said, then it stands to reason they don't have dicks! Which begs the question; how do birds have sex?"

"Why do you want to know the toilet and sexual habits of avian creatures, Axl?" X demanded.

"Wow, fancy words. I just wanted to know, s'all! Is that a bad thing?" Axl replied, grinning.

X sighed, burying his head in his hands. "You just wanted me to pay attention to you, didn't you."

"Pay attention to me I'm bored." Axl promptly whined.

"You are not Lucifer, now shut up and let me continue with my work."

Axl was actually shocked that X even got that reference, which at least proved that he did something other than sit around all day and be boring-as-balls.

"How much more work do you gotta do?" Axl whined again. "I'm bored. B-O-R-E-D. Totally and utterly bored. Bored outta my mind. I'm so bored I'm willing to shoot holes in that wall in the shape of a smiley face. I'm so bored I'm willing to shoot a smiley face into your _desk_. I'M BORED DAMN YOU."

"You know, I could have you detained for speaking to your superior that way." X reminded him flatly, looking up.

"But you won't." Axl said.

"But I won't." X agreed sadly. "I do wonder why . . ."

"My roguish good looks? My charming personality? My handsome face?" Axl suggested.

"No, no, and hell no."

"Can we go do some training or something?" Axl asked him, slipping down until he was pretty much just lying on the chair rather than just sitting on it. "I'd rather just shoot something than sit here waiting for you to finish . . . whatever you're doing. C'mon, seriously, the only time I've ever seen you not with a datapad in hand was when you tried to cut Zero's hair off for the bullshit with your walls and armour. Where's the fun in datapads and holo-screens?"

"Well, for one, online RPGs." X answered.

Wait what.

At once, Axl shot off his chair and was suddenly behind X's chair, leaning over his shoulder to gape at the holo-screen.

Yep, that right there was some random RPG game that Axl didn't know the name of nor did he care, but it looked awesome and somehow X was playing that and managing to do his work at the exact same time.

X was clearly a fucking god.

"How?" was all he could manage to say.

In response, X just smirked at him, the blue bastard.

"Am I still boring?" X asked slyly.

"No. You're awesome. How."

"Reploids and androids can multi-task, you know. I just happen to be way better at it than others. You want me to set you up with this game, or what?"

Axl grinned at him. "You, sir, have just become my favourite Hunter in the entire damn base. Get me into this."

"Get me into this, sir."

"No need to call me sir."

X rolled his eyes and pointed at Axl's abandoned chair, which he promptly rushed over to grab and roll back to sit next to the older Hunter.

"Okay, setting up your own character is pretty simple." X began, completely disregarding the four datapads and bringing up a second holo-screen to help Axl. "For _Extreme Measures_ , you need to choose between six different types of basic characters, and you upgrade them as you go along . . ."

 **oooo**

"Zero, I'm kinda sorry but not really that sorry, but X is my new favourite dude in this whole crackhouse." Axl informed Zero the next morning. "You now hold the honoured place of second-favourite."

"He showed you _Extreme Measures_ , didn't he?"

Axl blinked, surprised. How did he . . .?

Zero just laughed at him. "Did he tell you that he's the one who made it?"

"You fuckin' what." Axl gasped.

X. Was. A. God.

"If X can be believed- and he can't, he's a damn pathological liar- apparently he just got bored one day and decided 'hey, why don't I make a game?' and it went on from there." Zero told Axl. "You didn't wonder why his rank on _XM_ is one and not something random like three hundred and whatever?"

"Is three hundred and whatever your rank?" Axl asked, smirking.

"Oi, watch it, I'm still your mentor even if I am your friend." Zero paused, pursing his lips, and then sighed. "Three hundred and sixteen."

"HAH! X is better at games than you are!"

"He _made_ the damn thing, I'd be worried if he _wasn't_ better!"

To be honest, Axl wouldn't have pegged X down as a gamer- no, he would have thought it'd be Zero, and X would be the bookish guy.

Okay, yeah, X was still bookish. He was more bookish than Axl was, anyway, but in Axl's experience, the bookish ones generally tended to look down on gamers, while gamers hardly ever bothered to read anything that wasn't a holo-screen.

But Zero wasn't much of an online gamer, though still somewhat a gamer nonetheless, and as he told Axl a few minutes later, he only really started playing _Extreme Measures_ because X had been raving about it one day and he wanted to see what all the fuss was about.

And of course, like with Axl, X declined to mention that he was the one who created _XM_ to begin with. It took Zero three years to figure it out, and when he did, he didn't speak to X for an entire month out of sheer spite.

Zero maybe had a point when he said X was a pathological liar . . .

Maybe these Maverick Hunters weren't so much a band of elite warriors (well, okay, they were) as they were completely and utterly fucking insane.

It was a damn good thing Axl was used to insane.

 **OOOOOO**

Renny: I actually originally wanted to add more content, like adding a scene with Signas explaining to Axl what the difference is between a commander and the commander, but after getting past my headcanon of 'X was deemed incompetent and incapable of leading the Maverick Hunters and the mean humans brought Signas in to do the job instead', I kinda felt it was way out of place.

Zero: And since this is basically pure crack . . .

Renny: Yeah, I didn't wanna get into the touchy-feely bullshit and ruin the tone of the story. Anyway, moving on, I may or may not have figured out how to post stories on _Archive of our Own_! I'm gonna test it out with this one-shot, but if it doesn't work then oh well.

X: Not really 'oh well', you want it to work- you're not exactly using _Fanfiction_ much as of late.

Renny: Ain't used it in weeks . . . I actually prefer _AO3'_ s layout, to be honest. Anyway, read and review, and pray that I can figure out _AO3'_ s story posting bullshit!


End file.
